


Stress Isn't A Good Color On You

by sklort_mcfungus



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Issues, Trans Character, also writing from maka's pov is fun i should do it more often, anyways prepare for some uhhhh, maka is always anxious, manga compliant, soul represses everything, the only het pairing ive liked in years sdlkfjslkdm, trans!soul, wrote this at 3 am whats up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 19:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11996277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sklort_mcfungus/pseuds/sklort_mcfungus
Summary: Ever since the defeat of Asura, things have slowed down to a comfortable lull as the denizens of Death City start to settle back into their lives again. With Maka and Soul being the legendary duo to create the Last Death Scythe, the last thing the young Albarn expected was for something to come between them. And with Soul being the Repression King he is, is absolutely intent on not letting his find out just what emotions he's been stewing in for the past few weeks, but just may have to confront his biggest fear: opening up to others.





	Stress Isn't A Good Color On You

**Author's Note:**

> hi so its like 3 am and i decided writing was a good idea? i have no idea where most of this came from and hopefully i'll be able to get chapter 2 out pretty quickly. anywaaaays, hope you enjoy and stuff!

If there were a metaphorical manual for symbiotic soul relationships, Maka would’ve read it cover to cover. She already knows the basics- Soul Resonance, appearing in your partner’s mindspace (which was, admittedly, creepy as all hell), and keeping the ‘gears’ between her and her partners’ souls together. However, this metaphorical manual skimped on something that she really would like to have known beforehand; Rapid emotional change. She _thought_ this imaginary tome would impart on her just why, after Soul had become a Death Scythe, she suddenly felt like the Red Bull she chugged earlier confiscated her Wings™ whenever he was close to her. Maka Albarn is _not_ a midmorning slump kind of gal. Maka Albarn is _not_ a crash-in-the-middle-of-the-day-er (which she has made a mental note to make up a good term for). Maka Albarn _is_ a go-getter. A wake-up-at-6-am-er. Yet, for whatever reason, her partner entering the room suddenly makes her feel a pang in her chest that leaves her slumping over her desk like a lazy Goo-Creature. 

As she sat with her knees to her chest in her computer chair, scrolling through advice column articles at precisely 2:31 in the morning, Maka reminded herself to write an angry non-existant letter to the author of this illusory Soul Relationship instruction book. Late nights were not too uncommon for her, but she usually stayed up because she hasn’t caught Hypnos’s sleepy spell yet, or because she had stuff to do. Yet, lately, she’s felt this _compulsion_ to stay up. It felt like a competition to her, almost, like getting the highest score on a videogame, but instead of trying to 360-Splatscope that Un-Fresh Fool of an Inkling, she just wanted to rack up the most Sleep Deprivation Points. And this really damn interesting article by Dr. Laura Feelgoodcommunicationsberg III wasn’t helping her sleep problem in any way (who COULD put down an article titled ‘Hell? In YOUR Friendship? It’s More Likely Than You Think’). However, the three hours of fluorescent light shining the numerous advice columns into her retinas had begun to really wash into the crevices of Maka’s brain. Before she could stuff more worrying clickbait into her brain, she pushed the computer chair away from her desk with a powerful shove from her legs.  
God, when did her knees start hurting so much? 

More protests from Maka’s tired body escaped her chest in the form of a loud yawn that rivaled the buzzing of the old fan in the dark corner of her room. Despite the moon being snuffed out by Crona’s sacrifice (a memory that the young Miss Albarn doesn’t want to revisit), silvery light still slipped into the room through the edge of her polka-dotted curtains. It was insidious, the way the streetlamps claimed the little corner of her room as their own. As insidious as all the possible things that could be inhibiting her connection to Soul. At first, she’d marked it down to trauma. She lost a friend. She’d almost _lost_ many friends. Every move and swipe of the Scythe she made on the moon was the difference between victory and certain death… That’s enough to put strain on _anyone._ Yet, as the excitement of fighting left everyone’s bodies and life picked itself up as normal, the puzzling symptoms began to pile up. The sheer force of negative emotions surrounding them made hanging out with Soul hard, and training with him nearly impossible. But, why? They hadn’t so much as bickered recently, but she chalked that up to Soul just not being too talkative in the past couple of months. You can’t argue if you don’t talk, right? Then there was the issue of why that white-haired enigma of a boy suddenly chose the quiet route. At first, Maka feared it was her fault- maybe she was being snappy at him and didn’t realize it. Maybe that one friendly jab she made at his messy hair actually _did_ hurt. Those worries, however, subsided when she noticed him being quiet with everyone else, too.

He’d been obsessively checking the mailbox and his phone, too, and every single time Maka caught him swiping a look at his inbox, his brow would furrow and her chest would pound. Chest pounding. That sounded like it could be a symptom for something. Thoughts of her having some strange, chronic disease that only decided to conveniently flare up when Soul was around flashed into Maka’s mind. It didn’t take too long for her brain to travel the path from _‘I could have a disease’_ , to _‘I have to arrange my funeral now,’_ and within seconds her fingers were flying over the keyboard. Her hasty search inquiry read, “low energy chest pain tense muscles insomnia”, as she decided to leave the “when my friend enters the room” out of the search bar for now. Google didn’t need to know she was having a crisis. However, what Google did seem to know was that she was stressed. Of course. How could she miss it? These were the classic symptoms of stress, yet, she had nothing to be stressed about. Asura was defeated. Soul was a Death Scythe. Her homework was done. The oven was turned off, the laundry was done, and there are absolutely NO spiders in her room. Life was good, according to that mental checklist. Yet, Soul the Storm Cloud just seemed to put a shroud of stress over that sunny-good feeling of accomplishment.

The more connections the axons in her brain paved, the more she was able to zero in on when that started. There was a letter she distinctly remembered Soul eyeballing with all of the dread of a sixth-grader hearing the words “Pacer Test”. It was unopened all the way to its trip inside the garbage bin. At the time, she shrugged it off, because hey, she hates advertisements too. Yet, her mind-meat hadn’t even entertained the thought of it being more than a flyer for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Bahamas on a lovely cruise. Maka, being the smartest-dumbass in the world, just turned the page on her book like nothing was happening. Someone had to have been contacting Soul. Someone he doesn’t like- which could be any number of people. His contempt ranges from the barista at Deathbucks that insisted he was a woman, to the kid at school who once tried to start a fistfight with Maka (which she COULD’VE totally won if it weren’t for a certain peacemaking Sharkboy). But, why would any of those people send him a letter? The only people that send letters for anything other than monetary purposes are family.  
Oh.

Family was one of the subjects Soul was always tight-lipped on. Maka knew nothing about his family, other than that he has one. Even after almost a half-decade of being his partner, friend, and roommate, that continued to be the biggest riddle surrounding him. They’d been through so much together, to the point where she’d undoubtedly follow him into certain death. Soul had even told her once that he’d ‘follow her to the ends of the Earth’. But, if they were so close, close enough to know each-other’s food preferences and favorite cheesy movies, he’d tell her just what was so bad about his family that he’d basically disowned them. She tried to Google his last name before, but the only thing that the results would bring up were some uppity famous couple, the Wikipedia of whom didn’t list Soul as their child, (nor did she think there was any way he was related to people being listed as ‘sue-happy’ and ‘upholding the soul of classical music’). Maka always imagined his home as someplace dark, somewhere that was either filled with painful silence or firey yelling. And with how Soul’s face soured when the topic of family came up, she wasn’t that far off the money. Undoubtedly, the letter that snuffed out the scythe’s smile was from the ever mysterious Evans household. 

It was at this point that the young Albarn realized that the stress she was feeling really WAS tied to Soul walking into the room, but it wasn’t just her stress. Sure, the worried buzzing in the back of her mind always brought up a big list of things that could potentially kill her. And, sure, sometimes she was under enough pressure to turn coal into a diamond. And she guessed she always fretted over trying to do good enough for others to notice. While they were excessive and unrealistic anxieties to have, she always used that to push herself, metaphorically taking the fire out of her skull and lighting it under her ass. It was _Soul_ who always seemed to want to take the easiest route out, who judged his abilities before he would even try anything, and who decided sleep was an easier way to deal with his problems. Obvious couldn’t even begin to describe how depressed he was, but never did Maka realize what toll that took on him physically, too. And how his wavelength proved her wrong. Now, Maka just wished there was some sort of warning label that appeared on her forehead when Soul became a Death Scythe: WARNING: CONSTANTLY RESONATING WITH YOUR PARTNER WILL RESULT IN FREAKY EMPATH ABILITIES, DUDE. TOTALLY FUCKIN’ GNARLY. If she’d known that his soul would be bared at all times now, she would’ve talked to him through this a lot sooner.

Now there was only one thing left to do: Talk to him about it. Thankfully for her, Maka’s legs had done all the thinking for her, because within seconds she was knocking at Soul’s door. Time to get to the bottom of this.


End file.
